1. Plants are not truly sentient

Though certain scientific studies have shown that plants can react to stimuli, these reactions do not point to sentience because they lack three basic qualifications for requiring sentience:

• Sensory organs — Plants don’t have organs which enable them to see, hear, taste, etc. like animals do.
• Variability of response — Animals have a conscious perception which acts as an intermediary between their environment and their many different behavioral responses to it.  Plants lack this variability in that they will react in the same manner regardless of different scenarios (ex.: growing toward the sun).
• Appetite and locomotion — Nature has enabled animals to be sentient because they have the ability to move around.  As I discussed briefly in my post about “ethical meat”, pain exists to teach sentient creatures what stimuli to avoid in the same way that pleasure exists to teach sentient creatures what stimuli to seek.

Plants do not feel pain the way animals do because they have no reason for it.  If a plant had the means to get up and walk away from an area that was too dry, wet or cold, it would make sense for nature to enable the plant to feel pain.  Enabling a living organism to feel pain without the ability for that organism to alleviate that pain is not something done by nature unless by some sort of mutation (i.e.: a creature being born without limbs or with mental or physical disabilities).

For more information on the science and philosophy explaining why plants are not sentient, click here and here.

2. Logical fallacy: Tu Quoque

A person who uses the “plants have feelings too” argument is guilty of using the Tu Quoque (You Yourself Do It) logical fallacy.  This fallacy has to do with accusing your critic of being guilty of doing the same thing they accuse you of, even though the two situations being compared are not identical.  For example:

“If a vegan can kill plants, then I have the right to kill to animals.”

As I have illustrated above, plants are not sentient and comparing plant’s reactions to stimuli and animal’s proven sentience is not the same, and this renders your argument fallacious.

Taking the above into consideration, for the sake of argument I will ignore the fact that there are clear biological and ethical differences between killing a plant and killing an animal. Even if there was hypothetically no difference between the two, it still would not change the fact that two wrongs don’t make a right. For example, if I were to rob a convenience store would that somehow make it okay for you to steal someone’s car?

3. Non-vegans kill more plants than vegans do

Living a lifestyle which includes animal products kills more plants than living a vegan lifestyle because the animals used in these industries are almost exclusively herbivorous (plant-eaters), with many consuming huge amounts of grains, grasses and seeds to be converted into a much smaller amount of meat, dairy and eggs. Because of this, a non-vegan consumes more plants indirectly than a vegan does directly. In other words, vegans don’t filter their nutrients through someone else’s digestive system.

Furthermore, animal agriculture is not sustainable and is one of the leading causes of environmental damage, resource depletion, and ecological imbalance, which threatens all plant life, not just the ones consumed by humans.

• 70% of the crops grown in the US are grown to feed animals on feedlots [Plants, Genes, and Agriculture by  Jones and Bartlet]
• 7 football fields worth of forest land is bulldozed every 60 seconds to create more room for farmed animals and the crops that feed them [The Smithsonian Institution]
• 80% of all agricultural land in the US is used to raise animals for food and grow grain to feed them — that’s almost 50% of the total land mass of the continental US [Major Uses of Land in the United States by Marlow Vesterby and Kenneth S. Krupa]

If you really care about plants, you should go vegan.

4. The possibility of plant sentience does not minimize the reality of animal sentience

The improbable and unproven sentience of plants has no influence on the proven and blatantly obvious sentience of animals. Regardless of whether you believe that someone mowing the lawn is decapitating thousands of blades of grass, it doesn’t change the fact that animals suffer so long as you continue to consume them.

As discussed above, unlike plants, animals do have reasons to be sentient.

• Sensory organs, to feel and perceive the world around them (ex.: ears to listen for lurking predators, eyes to spy on prey, etc.)

• Variability of response, to respond differently in different situations (ex.: a wildebeest will have different reactions depending on whether a wildebeest or a lion is approaching the herd)
• Appetite and locomotion, to seek food through foraging or hunting, which requires the ability to move around. In order for animals to learn what to move toward and what to move away from, they require the ability to perceive pain and pleasure in relation to the objects around them.

In conclusion, because all living creatures must eat to survive, we must choose foods which cause the least amount of harm possible. Eating animal products causes an extreme amount of harm for not only animals, but for slaughterhouse workers, our planet, and our very own bodies.  And while eating plants can certainly contribute to the harm of laborers, field mice, and the plants themselves, we must remember that this harm happens on a far larger scale in the production of animal products.

Most importantly, we can’t forget that because animals are sentient and because they have the ability to suffer, we shouldn’t deny them their basic right to own their own life — to be free from the unnecessary harm that is inherent in all industries which exploit animals.  We must respect the rights of animals if we are indeed the ethical creatures we claim to be.

The post People For the Ethical Treatment of Plants: 4 Reasons Why the “Plant Sentience” Argument Doesn’t Work appeared first on Vegan Rabbit.

You’re hopefully going vegan for the animals, but it sure is nice having some icing on that cake.  Vegans not only enjoy the satisfaction of living a lifestyle that is kind to animals, but they also enjoy improved health and peace of mind knowing that their diet does exponentially less harm to the environment than their animal-eating counterparts.

Veganism is healthy, but don’t just take my word for it.  Vegan diets are approved by many mainstream health organizations including The American Dietetic Association, The American Heart Association, and The American Diabetes Association.

“It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life-cycle including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence and for athletes.” ~ The American Dietetic Association

Veganism is even advocated by The United Nations as one of the most important measures the world can take to preserve our planet’s environment by effectively reducing greenhouse gas emissions, groundwater contamination, resource depletion, topsoil erosion, deforestation, endangered species extinction and even world hunger.

“A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to saving the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change.” ~ United Nations

A 2009 Vegetarian Times study showed that 0.5% of the American population identifies as ‘vegan’ (roughly 1,000,000 people).  According to The Vegan Society, there are at least 150,000 vegans in the United Kingdom.  In the Vegetarian Times study 53% of pollers reported to be following a vegetarian diet to improve their overall health.

Still not entirely convinced?  Feast on this:

Simple list of vegan nutrition, fitness and health basics:

Nutrition

1. You can easily get enough PROTEIN on a vegan diet
2. You can easily get enough CALCIUM on a vegan diet
3. You can easily get enough OMEGA 3 FATTY ACIDS on a vegan diet
4. You can easily get enough IRON on a vegan diet
5. You can easily get enough VITAMIN B12 on a vegan diet
6. You can easily get enough VITAMIN D on a vegan diet
7. You can easily get enough HEALTHY FATS on a vegan diet

Fitness

1. You can easily LOSE WEIGHT on a vegan diet
2. You can easily BUILD LEAN MUSCLE MASS on a vegan diet

Disease prevention and management

1. You can easily prevent and manage CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE with a vegan diet
2. You can easily prevent and manage TYPE 2 DIABETES with a vegan diet
3. You can easily prevent and manage OBESITY with a vegan diet
4. You can easily prevent and manage PREMATURE AGING with a vegan diet
5. You can easily prevent and manage ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION with a vegan diet
6. You can easily prevent and manage OSTEOPOROSIS with a vegan diet
7. You can easily prevent and manage ACNE with a vegan diet

Life

1. You can safely be PREGNANT on a vegan diet
2. You can safely raise CHILDREN on a vegan diet
3. You can safely feed certain COMPANION ANIMALS a vegan diet
4. You can safely maintain PERSONAL HYGIENE with a vegan lifestyle

In addition, there are heaps of informative websites and blogs out there about living a healthy vegan lifestyle, many authored by educated and trained professionals.  Many Doctors, Registered Dietitians, personal trainers and professional athletes tout a vegan diet as the healthiest and most significant lifestyle choice you can make to improve your overall health (along with exercise, of course).

Here are a few of my favorites:

• NutritionFacts.org — a site run, authored and narrated by Dr. Michael Greger, M.D., a vegan Medical Doctor.  This site contains lots of quick, to the point, informative clips that are only a few minutes long and delivered in plain English (minus much of the technical jargon).

• DrFuhrman.com — another site run by a Medical Doctor, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller: Eat to Live), with loads of informative articles about disease prevention and maintaining optimal health.

• VeganHealth.org — a site run by Jack Norris, a vegan Registered Dietitian who is also the President of Vegan Outreach.  (Registered dietitians are different from nutritionists in that they have specialized training in nutrition and a four-year degree to go along with it.  They must also re-certify every few years and take on-going courses in nutrition for as long as they practice.  They are more knowledgable than Medical Doctors about nutrition and diet planning because they are specialists in this field.)

• VeganBodyBuilding.com — a great site with testimonials from famous vegan athletes including Robert Cheeke, Derek Tresize and Mindy Collette (click the links for pics).

• VeganBodyBuilding.org — an in-depth guide on the basics of gaining and maintaining lean muscle mass on a vegan diet.

Don’t forget, a vegan diet is only one part of a vegan lifestyle.

The post Forget Everything You Thought You Knew About Nutrition, Fitness and Health appeared first on Vegan Rabbit.